Communist Party leaders stepping down after election losses

The Communist Party leadership will officially resign from their posts at their next executive committee meeting, chairman Vojtěch Filip told reporters on Tuesday. The announcement comes in the wake of the largely unreformed party’s poor results in regional and first-round senatorial elections last weekend.

However, Filip did not rule out that he would run for chairman again at the Communist Party congress scheduled for November. The Communist Party won 4.8 percent of the vote in the Czech regional elections and lost all but 13 of their 86 seats in regional assemblies. None of their candidates have advanced to to the second (run-off) round in the Senate elections, to be held this weekend.